Tuesday, July 7, 2009

New Flavors: Gamaran

Gamaranby Nakamaru YousukeOut in the midst of the mountain is the doujo of the "Daigame Ryuu" (Giant Tortoise Style). There lives Kurogane Gama, the son of the legendary swordsman, Kurogane Jinsuke, who is believed to be able to kill 1000 martial artists in Unabara. There, one of the sons of Washitzu Naosata, Washitzu Naoshi, comes in search of the legendary swordsman, only to find that he had gone missing several years ago. After seeing the battle style of Gama, he instead chooses to ask Gama to come with him. Wanting to become stronger, Gama agrees to his offer, and that marks the beginning of Gama's battle to become the strongest of all . . . (Baka-Updates)

I've been seeing this title a lot recently. And it even has pretty high ratings. That got me really curious. It's a historical action manga, so most likely I'll enjoy reading it.

Now that I've read upto the latest chapter, I've finally realized what makes this manga pretty popular. One thing is the art on the fight scenes. They look really incredible! And it's not just sword fights. There's a variation of weapons and fighting styles.

Fights here are not win-or-lose; but win-or-die. Yeah, no speeches for the enemy to change or attempts to not kill the enemy even while beating him up. One's life is really at stake here. Moreover, characters really do anything to win. Like ambushing the base and mercilessly aims for vital points that will absolutely make the enemy in no condition to fight. I think that makes the manga more historically accurate. Yeah, real life in those days hadn't really been that pleasant. I find it cool that the mangaka made the fights that dangerous.

I also like it that the main character is no exemption to that. Yeah, he's the usual young fighting prodigy, but though he isn't exactly an evil dude, he's no goody-goody either. He kills his opponents without a second thought. He's childish but he ain't no saint or martyr.

Well, those are just some of the good stuff in this series, but I don't think it's not without problems. It has the shounen cliche, specifically the thing about the main character being TOO STRONG. I know that character strengths here aren't really realistic, but oh come on! He always gets to counter whatever special move his enemy makes and he gets to fight okay even if he got badly injured. The hell . . . don't make the main character too perfect. He's gotta have weaknesses somehow! But I see none . . . uuuggghh . . .

A character problem that I see is that none of them stand out so much (with 2 exeptions). The lords are boring greedy bastards (yeah, even the lord that is a main character), while the fighters are just so insanely strong and aim to become the strongest (or somethign similar). Personality-wise, I don't find any of them interesting, except that the drunken dude is pretty humorous, and the spy dude is . . . different. He's not exactly a fighter, but he had excelled on things that even a fighter got amazed. The spy isn't exactly my favorite character, but he's the only character that I find interesting and pretty unique so far in this series.

My biggest complain I guess is the story and development. Okay, it's mainly about fighters who fight in a battle and whoever wins will have their lords get what they want. AND? I mean, I don't see the story! All they do is just fight and fight and fight and fight! Fine, let's say this is the type of series that's just for the action, not for the story. BUT STILL! This is a manga! Not a fighting game! Have a story somehow. There's also the lack of background and development, especially on the main character! Like, why he wants to become really strong (we can assume what his reason is, but it's still not certain)? How the heck did he exactly become so strong? Where did his father go? But *sigh* we don't get much of that. From those 8 chapters, it felt like 75% of them are just fight scenes.

Overall, it has been incredible and unique but greatly lacks in story and character development. It's actually not bad at all, but though I love action, I really prefer that a good story (or entertainment at least! make it more itneresting and enjoyable) to go along with such. So, if you like historical Japan stuff and a sucker for cool action fights, I really think you should give this one a try. I think I'm the only one who didn't like the story and character aspect much of thise series, so yeah, possibly it's just me. So I still recommend this to such fans because it is indeed pretty good. Hehe~

Sapphire Pyro

READ: 8 chapters (out of 8 scanlated chapters released so far of an ongoing manga)VERDICT: Undecided

Historical Japan action stuff! My kind of thing as well!It had been really bloody awesome!However, I'm not that impressed. Lacks story and character development, imho.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

the latest one so far is up to chapter 26, that is the chinese version. They progress much more, and give more hints of the background of the characters. There is a lot of hints of personality conflicts coming up, so keep reading!!! It is actually quite funny, some of the bits...